Overcoming the Obstacle of the Daily Bell Schedule

If your classroom is self-contained, rejoice! If you are a member of a Smaller Learning Community (SLC) of 2 to 5 teachers, rejoice! However, if you are in a school where you are teaching six or more classes per day in 45-minute increments of time, your challenge is greater, but not impossible!

The obvious solution is for the school to reorganize the teachers and students into SLCs (Smaller Learning Communities). Although there was a spotlight on SLCs some 20 years ago, it was largely abandoned by the belief that they did not produce the desired results. The real problem though, was that the communities were smaller, but nothing else was changed. These SLCs continued to function in the same manner as they did before. The curriculum and instruction remained unchanged and classrooms were still teacher-centered - no paradigm shift occurred.

A growing number of schools are organized into effective SLCs, and they are experiencing huge successes in every dimension, from student motivation and engagement to student achievement; high levels of attendance, graduation rates and students going on to college; high levels of teacher morale, community involvement and yes, higher test scores.

Until your school is restructured into SLCs, then, what can you do?

Even if you have only 45 minutes with your students you can still design and implement a relevant, 21st century model of curriculum and instruction. It will not be as easy for you as it is for teachers in self-contained classrooms or SLCs, but it is possible! I did it myself in what appeared to be an impossible situation. I was teaching in a relatively small elementary school. There were four teachers for the fifth grade, and I was one of them, assigned to teach two subjects - Language Arts and Science.

Somehow, someone managed to create the worst schedule imaginable. While there were two teachers assigned to teach Language Arts and Science and two were assigned to teach Math and Social Studies, no two teachers shared all the same students. As for me, I had some students for Science only, some for Language Arts only, and some students for both! This resulted in my working with a total of 90 students each day. Nevertheless, I created a project-based curriculum based upon the required topic - taxonomy of the animal kingdom. I was handed a pile of old, yellowed transparencies, the first of which was an amoeba. The intent was that I would drag my fifth graders through a series of lessons and lectures, introducing them to the taxonomy. Was that exciting? No way! So I designed an interdisciplinary unit entitled Kingdom Animalia. It was designed in such a way that no matter whether my students attended one or the other of my classes, or both of them, it worked for them. It can be done!

The greatest challenge was the limitation of the 45-minute class period. The students were highly motivated, but it seemed that no sooner had they come to class, retrieved their materials and began their work - it was suddenly time to put their materials away and prepare to move to the next class. This was a truly insane situation! It would have made so much more sense to assign half the students to two teachers and the other half of the students to the other two teachers. Then the two teachers in these SLCs could have flexed their plans and schedules each day (except for students' schedules for art, music, PE, Spanish, Library and lunch!)

While it is preferable to have more time, as in a block schedule, you can still manage with 45-minute class periods. You just go ahead and plan your project-based curriculum and implement it in 45-minute chunks of time each day. You can do this whether you are teaching a single subject or multiple subjects. If it is possible to find another teacher to collaborate with you, that's even better. It doesn't matter whether that teacher teaches the same subject or a different subject. It is also nice, but not necessary, for you to have the same students.

Just design your project, get the students going on it and let them progress through the project each day. If the project is well-designed you will discover that the students are highly motivated. If you create the project in such a way that the students are working self-directed, independently and interdependently, you will be able to provide them with individual support. Your time will be freed from lectures and daily lesson planning, and you can then become the facilitator. It is much easier to keep track of each student's progress and needs in this way. The students work independently and sometimes in teams, and you simply move from one to the next to provide support.

At times you will need to introduce a new skill or concept, or you will observe a need for clarification, then you can take the time to do a quick mini-lesson - either for the entire class or for just the students that need it. You will find that this process provides both you and the students with a great deal of very welcome freedom. The result will be that students progress much more quickly through the curriculum, and achieve at much higher levels.

What about the standards, you ask?

The benefit of planning such a project is that you can "clump" or "bundle" many standards. This way you move through them much more quickly. Another way to speed up as well as to increase the levels of student learning is to utilize a variety of classroom strategies. These include teaching the students many thinking tools and study skills, research skills, teaching and presentation skills.

Other strategies include ways of organizing the students themselves. Also, you must begin be teaching students HOW to be self-directed and to work independently as well as interdependently. I always begin the school year with a mini-project, about 2 weeks in length. The focus is on teaching the students all these strategies and tools, but they can't be taught in a content vacuum, so we use the project as the content and stress the learning of the strategies.

We should not wait until students are in high school to do this. Students as young as kindergarten can be taught many of the skills and strategies. One of the obstacles teachers experience is the habit of having low expectations for students. Learn to have very high expectations, give the students the tools and strategies they need, and then support them in meeting your expectations. It works!

You will find that when you plan a PBL21 unit that there are more content standards that can be learned at high levels than you initially expected. Any theme or topic can be used to develop a high level, interdisciplinary project. A single discipline project can also be a good thing, and that may be what you must do, depending upon the courses you teach. That said, no matter what course you teach, you can always integrate most of the standards from Language Arts.

Petition for Change

​So far, I have been discussing how to implement PBL within the context of whatever schedule is in place at your school. Another recommendation: petition for a schedule change!

Make the case for a better schedule, starting with creating Smaller Learning Communities. Then, getting rid of the daily bell schedule. More than likely, no one in administration - perhaps even many of your colleagues - will not be open to this suggestion.

The next option for you is to request a waiver from the current campus-wide schedule by researching and then proposing a well-developed Pilot Project. Like a "school-within-a-school", create your own little Oasis in the Desert. Maybe it is just you with your own group of students all day - if you are elementary. That is what I did at one school, and it was extremely successful!

Or, you can create a single SLC composed of 3 teachers and 100 students. You can then flex your daily schedule as needed, perhaps spending l/2 of the day, each day, implementing your interdisciplinary PBL curriculum. And the other half of the day can be spent with content-specific classes as needed. This would include the content that is not integrated into your PBL project. This is being done, with high rates of success, in a growing number of schools - at all grade levels, from PK through 12th grade.

​​Get Started Today!​

​Are you ready to re-imagine and totally transform your campus or district into one that is truly 21st century, but you aren't sure how?

21st Century Schools is ready and willing to support you in that mission! ​Contact Anne Shaw, Director at 21st Century Schools, to find out how we can help you!